


Review/Meta on Torchwood: The Children of Earth Miniseries

by shadowkat67



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Meta, Multi, Reviews
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-25
Updated: 2009-07-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:40:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22382719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Kudos: 3
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	Review/Meta on Torchwood: The Children of Earth Miniseries

There's a quote in Entertainment Weekly magazine by Susan Downey, the producer of the horror film The Orphan, which states:  
_Horror films tap into our the most primal fears, and when we put a woman through this mythological journey and have her come out at the end kicking ass, the guys get the eye candy they want and the girls get the sense of 'I can face my demon.'"_

I think that in a nutshell may be why I am finding myself more and more drawn to the horror genre and less so to the romance genre. I like the fact that she comes out of it kicking ass. What struck me in this mini-series is the heroes of the series were the women, who continuously called the men on what they were doing. It's also the woman who took the lead.

Torchwood also tackled quite a few political themes, which I'll go into.

Captain Jack Harkness is an interesting character. From the moment we are introduced to him in the Doctor Who series, he is a bit of a con-man, a hustler, in it for himself. As the series evolves, he evolves. Rose brings him back to life in the season finale of Season 1 Doctor Who, and as a result, he is caught, immortal, incapable of dying. So, when we next meet him in Season 1, Torchwood, Jack Harkness is 100 years older than the time-agent, the man we met wandering about with Doctor Who. And the years have worn on him. He's experienced loved ones dying, while he stays immune. And he has done things that he would prefer to forget.

At the start of the mini-series, Jack and Ianto go into a hospital and remove a hitchhiker alien from the body of a corpse. They inform Dr. Rupesh, that it was the cause of the man's death. The hitchhiker, they state, acts like a drug. It gives the man a high. He died happy. Then jokingly they leave.

In episode 4, we find out the villians of the piece, the 456, an alien race that first visited earth in 1965, use human children as a sort of drug. In 1965, the 456 visited earth and in return for an antivirus or antidote - they requested the humans give them 12 children. So Captain Jack delivered 12 children to them as ordered. One child escaped, Clement McDonald, aka Timothy White. It is not until now that the humans learn what they did to the children.

The Colonel or representation of the United Intelligence - asks, "so why do you need our children? You are obviously hooked up to them - so I'm guessing it is to survive? To sustain yourselves in some way? As a father...I want to know."

He is most likely thinking, oh, this isn't so bad - they need the kids to survive. We are helping an alien race. It is an altruistic act.

But the 456 kill that justification. "A hit," they state. "For pleasure. The children release chemicals that make us feel good, that give us pleasure." Not unlike the alien hitchhiker Jack and Ianto removed from the corpse in episode one - it provided pleasure to the man it killed. The children in short are drugs.

In our own society, the dirty little secret is how we use others for our own advancement or pleasure. The drug trade threatening to destroy South America and Mexico - which continues to find a happy customer base in the US. Of course the users in the US, tell themselves, my use of cocaine isn't hurting anyone but me. Or if they legalized it, it wouldn't be an issue. Or the sex/slave trade that continues...or organ trafficking. This week a band of politicians and rabbis were arrested for trafficking in organs, they'd buy an organ from a needy person in Israel then sell it for about three times the price in the US to another needy person.

Here, in Torchwood, the politicians can't find a way out of the mess. Jack tries by informing the 456 that they won't yeild this time. So the 456 unleash a virus that kills everyone but Jack and Decker (who gets a face mask). (I think it is Decker, it is more than possible I misheard that name.). As a result, Jack loses his lover and best friend, Ianto. The last of the original Torchwood team. First Suzie, then Tosh and Owen, and finally Ianto. And he's faced with the fact that his sin of the past, delivering those children to the 456, without question, for a cure, has landed him here. He can't die. If only he could. As one of Johnson's operatives states - "he'd be better off if he stayed dead". Like The Doctor, his tissue regenerates, but unlike The Doctor, he stays the same, he doesn't become someone else.

Ianto's death, then later, and from my perspective, far worse, his grandson Colin's is necessary. For these deaths bring home to Jack Harkness the price of his own choices. Granted, Gwen is right when she states this is not all your fault. You could not have known. But, Jack has fallen prey to his own ego, his own sense of heroism, his own self-righteousness.

When he tells the 456 in a pivotal scene, "that a wise man once told me that an injury to one is an injury to all and when we realize that we are great!"

The 456 calmly reiterate. "You yeilded before when less was at stake, you will yeild now." What they leave unsaid, is "you will yield again. And again. And again. We have tapped a replaceable resource."

And Ianto states, "screw the philosophy, never was much one for philosophy, we won't give you our children."

The 456 unleash the virus that kills everyone in the building, but the two previously mentioned. And Jack screams out - "not him, anyone but him. I take it back. I take it back, just give me him." Perhaps realizing what an injury to one might mean. When we discuss sacrifice, as the politicians do in their safe rooms far far away from the fracas or danger, we aren't thinking of our own sacrifices. It never occurs to Frobisher that he may have to lose his children. That his actions could lead to that. As it never quite occurs to Jack that he will lose what he loves.

Both Frobisher and Jack in their mutual stand-off offer each other's families as bait for the trade. And both ironically lose theirs. Frobisher kills his to prevent a horror that he rightfully sees as worse than death. And Jack sentences his grandson to a painful death to save the world. One child, Johnson states, to save many. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...as Alice stands helpless against the glass, pressing her body against it, screaming no.

Denise Riley, the female politican, states aloud all the rationalizations and justifications and all the fears. We are agreed it won't be our kids. We are agreed that it won't be our extended family's. Right? Right? And if we need to choose, we just pick those who clearly won't amount to much.

And Gwen, in her monologue to the camera, asks where the magical Doctor is, who save the day without pain or sacrifice? Why isn't he here? Perhaps because he can't bear to look at us, he turns his back in shame.

The politicans, Jack, the Prime Minister, Frobisher, all state they have no other choice. Johnson says she has no other choice. But the thing of it is, we do. There's always a choice. Jack finds a way to get rid of the 456, but perhaps he could have found it sooner, if he'd been more focused on the task at hand? Or found another way. Was the sacrifice of his grandson necessary?

Fans of sci-fi and fantasy series or serials in general, often scream, couldn't the writer have found another way to solve the puzzel. Couldn't Whedon have turned Willow in the Buffy series without killing Tara? Or RTD have furthered Jack's arc without killing Tosh, Owen and Ianto? But the horror genre is often about death, our fear of it, and the pain of it. And people die in meaningless ways. Our attempts to save them or reactions to their death can often make us monsters.

The political allegory - how the politicans are first concerned with covering it up, and how they look to potential voters. The Prime Minister who almost coldly orders the human sacrifice, then asks people to come up with ideas on how to ensure no one knows he did it. The doublespeak, the side-stepping. And Denise Riley's comment to him, I think it was her, that his children are all grown and he has nothing to fear - except his precious reputation and life. Denise is no better, condeming those who she believes may be expendable.

They are so limited in their scope, their perception - that they cannot see the cost. That children are not a replaceable resource, they are unique. One dies, you do not get to have another. People say this to women who miscarry or don't want to hurt the child in their womb, you can always have another, we can't replace you. You can't replace that specific child either - that unknown quantity. A living thing is not like a couch, a tv set, a table, or a house - it's not replaceable. I had a cat I loved once. Name Simon. I had cats after him. And met many more. But none were anything like Simon. Simon was irreplaceable. Just as my neice is. And my granny. And well myself.

Jack finally sees that..if he didn't before. He tells Gwen that he has lost everything. There's nothing keeping him here. This world is too small, too confining. Everywhere he goes, a graveyard. You can't run away, Jack, Gwen states. Oh yes, I can, watch me. But she is right, he can't run away from who he is, and the choices he's made. His daughter who for a moment had bonded with him, now can't speak to him, can't look at him. Was Colin worth it? And at what cost?

In horror stories - we see pretend monsters or aliens, but they are given human traits. The traits inside ourselves that we hate or fear. The 456 who would do anything for a "hit" regardless of the cost, except of course their own lives. Are in a way a metaphor for the rich and priveleged who live off of the human slavery and drug trade. And Johnson, Decker - metaphors for how far we will go to protect our country from unknown threats. The needs of the one outweighed by the needs of the many ringing from their mouths.

It is the women in this tale, as I stated before, who are the survivors of it, and appear to a degree to have learned something. The cost to them is less extreme. And unlike most sci-fi series, they are depicted as I stated in a prior post in numerous ways. None are skinny or fashion icons. They aren't "beautiful models" with "perfect teeth" and "perfect skin" and "perfect hair" = male eye-candy. But women. People I would meet on the street. Lois Habiba - the PDA, who courageously contacts Torchwood and stands up to the politicians, at great risk to herself. A choice that seems almost insane. She is outnumbered and outgunned and knows little of Torchwood. But she does what she can to save the children. It is a selfless act and perhaps the most noble and heroic of the series. Jack sees himself as the hero at the beginning, but at the end, he realizes he was anything but. Then there are Alice, Gwen, and Ianto's sister - all women with curves, all fighters in their own ways. It is Gwen who fires the guns and orchestrates the rescue of Captain Jack from the concrete prison, not Ianto or Rhys. And it is Ianto's sister who insists on saving the neighborhood kids, with no fee, as her husband protests. Or Alice who stands up to Johnson and shows no fear when she is taken captive. Keeping her son calm. Gaining Operative Johnson's respect as a result. Johnson herself, like Jack, makes the difficult decisions, she goes against her superiors and gets Jack released from the government stronghold.

In horror tales, women are often given this type of power. In Alien, Sigourney Weaver was the lone survivor, the woman at the end of the film. And in Alien Sigourney was not depicted as a sex object a la Megan Fox or in Star Trek. Anymore than Linda Hamilton was in the Terminator flicks. These are women that women can identify with. People we know. People we are. In Lost, only the men get this range - of body types and shapes and sizes. Outside of Rose, the women tend to all look a bit like fashion models. Pretty. Not a Hugo in the bunch. The Brits seems to be better at this type of casting than Americans are.

The end of Torchwood...was haunting, because you felt the weight of what humanity had almost done, what Jack and the government had done in the past, fall on their shoulders. If they had said no back in 1965...things may have been different. It is to a degree what Doctor Who tells Jack when Jack states he has resurrected Torchwood. Why, the Doctor, asks, would you do that? I've changed it, Jack says. It's not what it was. The Doctor looks at him much the same way that I occassionally see an old man look at his grandson who has come up with a new great idea, weary. Jack's downfall is due to his own ego, his own view that he could save the world, without bearing the cost. And there always is one. History and religion are ripe with human sacrifice. Sacrifices made to our gods, and in the name of patriotism or nationalism. Or even freedom. The question posed by Children of Earth is high a cost are we willing to pay? And for how long? What price for the continuation of our race? And how much is one life really worth? And how do we place value? On what criteria? Is a grain of sand, really just a grain of sand?

These are hard questions to answer. And difficult to ask. Children of the Earth doesn't answer them. The title in of itself, may. We are children still. Our bodies matured. But in the eyes of the universe, in the eyes of God and its vastness, children - and like children still exploring our boundaries. The world has grown smaller. We can no longer ignore those who disagree or aren't like us. Our cultural differences are more apparent. Nationalism is rapidly becoming a joke in a world where you can talk to someone half a continent away in mere seconds, as if they were living next door. We live in different countries, but on the net, we may as well live in the same one. And history mocks us, when we state our country or our people is free from sin...our past sins come back and laugh in our faces, much as Jack's does. Every mistake we make in this brand new world is seen. I make a typo, a misspelling, a factual error and regardless of the disclaimers or caveats I may state, someone out there will tell me (which is okay) or may kick me for it (which is not). Sarah Palin is discovering this to her chagrin - in another time, she would be Queen, in today's world she is fighting an information tsunami, Obama, on the other hand, is using it to his advantage, almost Machiavellian in his manipulations of the stream.


End file.
